A new species of minnow, able to tolerate summer droughts, has been described from fish captured in Greece.
The new European cyprinid, Pseudophoxinus laconicus, has just been described by Roberto Barbieri of the National Centre for Marine Research in Greece and Maurice Kottelat of the National University of Singapore in the journal Ichthyological Exploration of Freshwaters.
Pseudophoxinus are small but diverse, polyphyletic group of cyprinids found in arid and semi-arid parts of Greece, Turkey, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Iran and Azerbaidjan. The fish are normally found in small creeks and streams, and can remain in pools for the summer during droughts.
The extremely rare fish is found within only a 0.6km2 area, so it has been classed as critically endangered.
For more details on the identification and classification of the new fish, see: Kottelat, M. and Barbieri, R. (2004) - Pseudophoxinus laconicus, a new species of minnow from Peloponnese, Greece, with comments on West Balkan Pseudophoxinus (Teleostei: Cyprinidae).